Everybody is talking about secret keys today. When I worked for a vendor of hardware security vaults used to store bank PINs, the master key was split over multiple smart cards, each held by a different senior executive. The modules themselves had fat RAM disks, case intrusion switches, and light sensors on their motherboard. Attempting to move or open one would wipe the ram drive.

Therefore it is vitally important to get the smartcard back *before* firing a senior executive.

Otherwise your hardware vendor may have to fly an engineer to your country. One who is comfortable using an angle grinder, knows exactly where to cut, and is patient enough not to make too many sparks.

@jalefkowit reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunkers_in_Albania "The bunkerisation programme was a massive drain on Albania's weak economy. [...] The programme diverted resources away from other forms of development, such as roads and residential buildings. On average, they are said to have each cost the equivalent of a two-room apartment and the resources used to build them could easily have resolved Albania's chronic shortage of housing."

RE: https://thecanadian.social/@Bowreality/117475561116805687

RE: https://live.acarsdrama.com/@acarsdrama/117474567695202306

acronym check, APU = Auxiliary Power Unit

APU is what usually provides power when the plane is on the ground (cockpit systems, air conditioning, air pressurization, spinning up main engines

so in this case, since their APU is inoperable they need to get ground power before they shut off main engines (so air conditioning doesn't die amongst other things)

Progressive Mass has a voting guide for the 9 referenda we have in front of us this year. Short version: vote no on 3, 5 and 8.

https://www.progressivemass.com/2026ballot/

slopst.rs

Today is one of those days where several different projects have converged at @spritely. In 2024, @cwebber made a federated relay system for OCapN. In 2025, I made a prototype of a local-first chat program that does CRDT data sync over OCapN. Over the past few months, @tsyesika has added end-to-end encryption to the relay system. And just now, at last, @tsyesika and I had an end-to-end encrypted chat using two relays that federate over Tor and it all just worked!!! its-happening.gif

it amazes me regularly how much you can learn about a new musician you just came across and how easily the info is generally found here in the modern age.

I try not to only bitch about what sucks, and this part doesn’t suck. it’s cool as fuck honestly, because before the internet took off, before telecommunications was a part of normal life, if you heard a song by a band you were not familiar with, you could either try to track them down in the music magazines to find out more about them or you could go buy their album and read its liner notes. maybe some random cashier at Hot Topic down the mall knows something about them. highly chaotic and intermittent as information sources go, frankly.

so this, this being able to not only find the music but also find the musician and their other work and the stories around their work and their backstory on a whim, casually, without a library even, is freaking wild. good job on that part, society.

@renata I never liked them, but I didn’t hate Waymo’s as an SF biker, because at first they respected all the laws, never drove nor parked in bike lanes, always signaled, and were easily predictable.

Sometime early 2024 is when they started intentionally making illegal maneuvers, and using bike lanes.

CBC has a "live results" page up here:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/alberta-referendum-live-results-9.7385074

#canpoli

https://social.coop/@cwebber/117468157927856842

Things that are not the same:

Goiter

Gout

Pillowfort really bucked the odds making it this far. It was a respectable effort in the end even if I had my qualms early on with the security stuff (and it was pretty serious, it wasn't just "you can name yourself signout and people get signed out clicking your profile haha", it was "you can trivially send DMs as if you're another user because if you visit the link for the DM it doesn't check to see if it's really you" stuff).

But the math just doesn't work.  I don't know how to make the math work.  I wish I did.  But the only way you can run social media on beer money and inconsistent donations is on the scale of small fedi servers.  If you want one centralized platform with a ton of users, it costs too much money.

computer programming isn't really about "writing instructions" it's about "putting boundaries on concepts" but we decided to put people in charge of it who lack respect for instructions, boundaries, or concepts.

I feel like it should be a bigger national news story that Republican PACs are pouring resources into a potential spoiler candidate fronted by PSL (lmao forever, one of my former DSA political bullies was a dual carder with PSL and I have nothing but contempt for PSL) and they're funding tons of mailers showing this guy as basically Ohio's Mamdani, but he'll ultimately be a spoiler candidate against Sherrod Brown. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/gregy-levy-ohio-senate

My comment was saying that every crisis is an opportunity and that maybe linux becoming ensloppified will be the catalyst for the advancement of secure microkernels.

This past weekend I caught a glimpse of a tie-dye t-shirt on a passer-by and complimented him.

He then turned and I got to see the whole front design, which included a skeleton dunking a basketball. And he then explained that, in 1992, newly independent Lithuania did not yet have the wherewithal to properly support its Olympic men's basketball team with, for instance, designing and providing official jerseys. And that the Grateful Dead heard about this and sponsored that team, taking care of many expenses. And this t-shirt was a replica of? homage to? those donated shirts.

I later told @leonardr about this and we looked up the #history. There's a documentary! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Dream_Team

1/2

My household then discussed how nice it is when a well-off person or group takes a philanthropic interest in some need and just covers it.

"You know who's inherited the Grateful Dead's legacy? Flava Flav." [reminder that Mr. Flav sponsors many women's Olympic sports teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor_Flav#Sports ]

"Yeah. Women are the Lithuania of gender. Recently gained independence."

2/2

@GI_Jack@hackers.town

hoping Citizen Jablowmie enjoys the newly-laminated items.

during their long decline, Radio Shack stood out for a while for asking for a phone number. "Dude, it's just a pack of AA batteries. No."

Harbor Freight & maybe Michaels stand out for me as places I'm as often as not surprised to get so prompted.

But it's everywhere really, & the establishment of these practices in brick'n'mortar retail prefigured online-facilitated surveillance capitalism in a way rarely acknowledged.

@yaxu

I try to document as much of what I can of what I do. But I do that for myself, first, and sometimes only for myself, and always imperfectly within a context of limits.

I'm sloppy, imprecise, irresponsible. I mix data & code, code & configuration, the private & the public. I use global variables & violate every confidence.

Nevermind that sharing a lot of that would be wrong, if not criminal. The prospect of first and always "open" inhibits me. I don't have these worries so long as I do nothing. I already do much more nothing than I'd like.

This idea that everything can ever be fully open is a totalizing brightsided twin to "you only need worry if you have something to hide" surveillance authoritarianism. It turns a gift freely given into an obligation.

I find it noxious, if not inhumane.

@janneke